Story By Krysten Maier, Canada
Photo by Elizabeth Dougan, Australia
A monitored life - The panel of buttons the subjects would push to inform observers of their activities
Have you ever wondered what life would be like without the regiments of time, the imposition of the 24 hour clock? Human beings have adjusted their daily habits to the rising and setting of the sun, and in doing so, spend a third of their lives asleep. What would our natural habits be like without these external indicators? Inquiring minds wanted to know, and so inquiring minds, located right here in Madurai, created an experiment to answer these very questions.
The human biological clock
Dr. P. Kumarasamy was one of a team of researchers at the Madurai Kamaraj University who came together to develop a way to observe live human subjects in an environment completely devoid of the signals of time. This materialized in the form of the Human Isolation Chamber, the first of its kind in India, among only five in the world when the experiment was first conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “The whole body is timed,” states Kumarasamy, a student of chronobiology, a little known field which looks at how animals adapt not only to their physical environment, but also to their time environment. Circadian rhythms are actually known to regulate hundreds of bodily functions, including cell division, hormone production, and blood pressure. And every vertebrate possesses a biological clock. What I once thought was just a metaphorical clock is in fact a nerve concentration called the suprachismatanucleus (SCN). This nucleus is located at the base of the hypothalamus in the cerebral hemisphere of the brain, regulating the body‘s various systems throughout the day. “The whole body is timed,” states Kumarasamy, a student of chronobiology, a little known field which looks at how animals adapt not only to their physical environment, but also to their time environment Studies show that if you actually remove the SCN, the animal will lose its 24-hour behaviour and develop sleep-wake behaviour as irregular as a new born. This biological clock is therefore a product of evolution to life on earth—a necessity dictated by the rotation of this planet in our solar system and now built into our genetics. An avid fan of science fiction, Kumarasamy explains it to me with a twist: if aliens abducted a specimen from earth, they would be able to learn about our planetary cycle just by studying the timed cycles in the human body.
A bold initiative
Before aliens could get to him, Dr. Kumarasamy was abducted by his own colleagues first. Although he was among those who created the human isolation chamber experiment, he was also granted the unique experience of spending 21 days in the time free environment; a scientist put under his own microscope. This rare opportunity to become the subject of such an intriguing inquiry into the human mind was one he could not pass up. His friends, knowing Kumar to be an extrovert and a natural people person, bet he wouldn‘t make it through a single day in isolation. But the man embraced the experience and stayed the whole three weeks alone. Kumarasamy recalls the experience with the sort of fond delight of one recounting tales of their wild youth or past travels. One might think this a caustic and alienating venture, being submerged in a bunker the size of a studio apartment, completely cut off from the outside world. However, the consensus among Kumarasamy and his colleagues, who also took turns in the chamber, was that their stays were like miniature holidays. I can think of worse situations than having no responsibilities, no appointments, nothing particular to do, with a crew just outside ready to cater to your every need.
Imposition of routine
“I lived a normal life there, I enjoyed myself,” Kumarasamy tells, detailing how he spent his days in a regular routine. He would wake up, do some exercise, prepare and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner as he felt hungry, read from the small library provided, and watch movies, fetched at his request. At every action, the Kumar was required to press a button indicating to the outside observers that he was waking up, taking meals, or going to sleep. This button system allowed for detailed recording of data, as direct visual monitoring would compromise privacy. A wrist watch-like instrument was constantly kept on his person to measure vibrations caused by movement. Additionally, a probe was constantly recording his deep body temperature for further mensuration. Other than these concessions, Kumarasamy observed no changes to his lifestyle, and certainly sensed no change to his sleep-wake cycle without the physical representation of time to influence his actions. By the end of the three weeks, the man never could have predicted how his schedule had changed. Suddenly one day, just as Kumarasamy was about to go to sleep, he received word that the experiment was over, it was time to come out. He remembers wondering why they would take him out so early, without letting him stay for the full 21 days.
Re-adjusting to a timed world
In fact, in societal time, three weeks had passed. In the real world, as he emerged from the chamber, it was not bedtime, but noon! He was dazzled by the bright light: “I didn‘t expect that!” He recounts how the sleepiness just dissipated, as he reentered the world with a surge of adrenaline. While he was happy during his time in the chamber, he didn‘t feel like talking to people much for two or three days after his release. An even harder adjustment was resynchronizing his biological clock back to societal time after the time free life in the chamber. Such was the case with every subject: in the chamber, their perceived, objective days stretched longer than the 24 hour day, making readjustment tough. This pattern found in subjects reinforced the theory that human beings have a slow running clock. This means that when freed from the constrictions of time, humans naturally settle into a longer sleep-wake cycle than the societal day allows. In the human isolation chamber, Kumarasamy‘s day was 28 hours: 20 hours of wakefulness to every 8 hours of sleep. Other subjects‘ rhythmicity was as much as 36 hours. In the extreme case of L. Geetha—the only woman participant of the group—a sleep-wake cycle of 46 hours emerged, as she stayed awake for a maximum of 34 hours and slept for a maximum 19 hours.
Suddenly one day, just as Kumarasamy was about to go to sleep, he received word that the experiment was over, it was time to come out. He remembers wondering why they would take him out so early, without letting him stay for the full 21 days.
Everyone‘s sleep-wake cycles are different; it‘s just a genetic variance like any other. The interesting thing is that through this experiment, the team found out that a person‘s sleep-wake cycle is directly correlated to their mental calculation of time lapse. Whereas previous to the isolation chamber findings, time lapse was thought to be purely psychological, their data proved that it is really physiological. To test time lapse, a subject was told to press a button after they believed two minutes had elapsed. To use the example of Geetha, she pressed the button after four minutes, double the time, just as her sleep-wake cycle was double the societal norm. Based on their findings, the team was also able to put forth the hypothesis that two clocks control the body‘s rhythms: the sleep-wake cycle and also a separate body temperature cycle. The two express the same periodicity in the societal day, but they desynchronize in a time free environment as the temperature rhythm maintains a 24 hour cycle. Through the exceptional willingness of Geetha, who agreed to stay 90 days in the isolation chamber, the team was able to conclude that a woman‘s menstrual cycle is tied to the temperature cycle and not the sleep-wake cycle.
Chronobiology and medicine
Kumarasamy‘s recount of this extraordinary experience held me rapt from start to finish. It is incredible how linked the body is to time and how large a role it plays in our functioning. The medical implications of chronobiology are even more incredible. Dr. Kumarasamy has been able to link their conclusions to the way blood clots are formed more or less rapidly at different times of the day, as well as the rate of degradation of alcohol in the human body at different times. His knowledge of chronobiology even helped Kumarasamy prolong the life of his father who was diagnosed with stomach cancer and given six months to live. Understanding that cell division, or mitosis, occurs between 12:00 am and 6:00 am, he suggested that chemotherapy be administered at night. He insisted on this unconventional method believing that the treatment was going to waste during hours where the targeted cells were largely inactive. His father ended up living six years.
Knowledge is power. The human isolation chamber experiments in chronobiology Dr. Kumarasamy participated in were powerful indeed.
http://www.maduraimessenger.org/printed-version/2013/may/quest/
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